


Much to do with hate, but more with love

by El Staplador (elstaplador)



Category: Romeo And Juliet - Shakespeare
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-05
Updated: 2021-02-08
Packaged: 2021-03-17 01:13:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 2,279
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29217003
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elstaplador/pseuds/El%20Staplador
Summary: Romeo was not born to hate.(Four paths that might have been taken.)
Relationships: Benvolio/Romeo Montague, Mercutio/Benvolio Montague/Romeo Montague, Mercutio/Romeo Montague, Romeo Montague/Mercutio/Tybalt
Comments: 14
Kudos: 13
Collections: Chocolate Box - Round 6





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Alley_Skywalker](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Alley_Skywalker/gifts).



> Hope you're enjoying your first Chocolate Box! I liked all your prompts and pairings, and found it difficult to choose, so...

Romeo was not born to hate. He learned his hatred by rote, knowing it to be his duty to his father and his name. He learned it with his letters and his figures; he learned to hate as he learned to lunge and parry, and for the same reason.

Hatred did not burn him, as it did Tybalt, heir to the house of Capulet and all the Capulets’ hatred of the Montagues. When Romeo fled, laughing, from the Capulets’ ball, a few paces behind Benvolio and Mercutio, he did not expect Tybalt to pursue him in hot fury. Still, he did not shrink from Tybalt’s challenge; he drew his sword and returned stroke for stroke.

The noise roused all of Verona. It roused the Prince.

But if Romeo was as skilled a fencer as any man in the city, he had not that edge of anger that drove Tybalt on, and it was Romeo’s blood that splashed to the flagstones, Romeo who could fight no longer with a deep slash in his sword arm.

The Prince was merciful, and let it be known that he was so. Not death, but exile. Exile for Romeo, who had provoked the ancient enemy. Exile for Tybalt, who had been the first to spill blood.

Mercutio took Romeo from the city, ignoring the Montagues’ lamentations and his own uncle’s remonstrations alike, and commandeered his uncle’s own coach to bear his friend away. And as for Tybalt – well, what did they care for him, or where he might go?

Mercutio took Romeo at first to a monastery, where the brothers asked no questions but tended the wound with sweet herbs and clean bandages. Later, he found a hut that had once been a woodburner’s, and found a man to mend the roof, and a stream for water and the whole wood for hunting.

There were other men in the countryside around Verona: outcasts, lazars, criminals. A city would have been safer - but perhaps it wouldn’t, after all. They kept themselves to themselves and were safe enough. The first man who tried to rob them was sent away with a gash in his cheek that he hadn’t bargained for, and the word spread.

Romeo, who could have made friends with anybody but a Capulet, made friends with a woman who kept a cow and grew vegetables. Every now and again Mercutio returned to Verona, but he always came back, would keep coming back, he said, until he could bring Romeo with him. In the meantime he took the news, and oranges and cakes and such other delicacies as he could find and carry, and with these they made do. Neither of them was much of a housewife, but their little hut was a good deal preferable to the graveyard, even so.

And so the year wore on, into the very depth of winter. The chill wind rolled down from the mountains, drawing snow and ice with it. Their little hut would have been as cold as a graveyard itself, but that under the pile of furs and blankets the one bed was warm with the heat of two men.

One night a man came to the door – not a robber, though he had once been an enemy; not a stranger, though the name by which they had once known him seemed to have lost its teeth. He was thin and ragged and chilled to the bone. His eyes flashed with anger when he saw who answered the door, but he stayed there on the threshold. What else could he have done, with the cold wind howling?

They let him in, gave him meat and milk as one might a stray cat, and he, like a stray cat, took it greedily and spat his thanks. They asked him to stay, for it was such a night that one would not turn anybody away. He wrapped himself in what was left of his cloak and curled up in front of what was left of the fire. Romeo and Mercutio went to their bed, and were colder than they had been on other nights.

He knew soon enough, knew that Romeo and Mercutio were more to each other now than ever they had been before. He said nothing, but he knew. Romeo wondered privately if Mercutio had told him, or if Mercutio had not needed to tell him. For his face did not show disgust, or contempt, but a courteously unspoken longing.

It was Romeo who asked Tybalt to come to bed with them, knowing what he risked by speaking the unspoken, but unable to bring himself to leave the man outside the circle of their love. He had forgotten why he ever hated. It was Mercutio who laughed louder, whose eye sparkled, who went about as if a load had been lifted from him. He could not go long without fighting, but they had found something better than fighting. It was Tybalt who was suspicious, hesitant, drawn to the warmth but wary of he who offered it. He learned to trust the hands on his hair, the lips on his mouth, the giving and receiving of pleasure that did more to heal old wounds than words had ever done.

After a while, he stopped suggesting that he should leave.

The winter grew colder, but the three of them became warmer, heated this time not by hatred. In the spring they would have been found there all three together, if any had thought to look for them there. In the summer, Mercutio went to Verona and told his uncle a strange tale – not all the truth, oh no, but enough of it, enough of it to bring three men home to the city where the feud had died for lack of fuel.

Such a thin hatred, it was not surprising that the point of a blade was enough to turn it aside, flick it away, reveal something altogether stronger and stranger underneath.


	2. Chapter 2

Romeo was not born to hate, and nor was Mercutio, for all that he loved fighting as he did fucking, for all that he would pick a quarrel for the sheer amusement of working it out with words or rapier.

The ball was a dull affair. They drank; they danced. Romeo declared that he had not come to watch the lady he loved dance with every man in Verona but him; nor had he any interest in the Capulets’ arrangements for their daughter. Benvolio showed him the ladies he thought might turn his attention and his affection, and, when none proved the equal of Rosaline, declared Romeo a poor fish, and left.

Mercutio, not to be so easily deprived of scandal, proposed that Romeo should dance with him, or he should ask Tybalt, but Romeo, still uneasy, persuaded him to come away. It would hardly be fair to let Benvolio miss out on the fun, after all.

Mercutio was having none of that – if Benvolio chose to leave, it was his own concern – but he let Romeo lead him away, out of the stuffy hall, into the silver-lit, sweet-smelling orchard, and there they sat together under an apple tree.

And Romeo, thinking that all the unwilling ladies in the world were small beer compared to one loyal friend with sense and one loyal friend with a sense of fun, nudged Mercutio in the ribs, and Mercutio nudged him back, and a nudge became a shove, and a shove became a scuffle, until he lay on his back, his hands pinned above his head by Mercutio’s strong wrists.

‘Who’s there?’ someone cried, and Romeo held his breath while Mercutio called back, ‘One who needs night’s mask for his task, not those silk scraps they wear indoors!’

‘Your pardon, sirrah Mer- – honoured guest,’ the voice came back, laughing.

‘So careless of my reputation?’ Romeo breathed, when the sound of footsteps had faded away.

‘So careful of your skin!’ Mercutio shifted, but did not loose his hold. ‘Whoever they think me out here with, it can hardly be – Romeo – a Montague – can it, now?’

‘Ah!’ It was half a sigh, half a gasp. ‘Then who am I? Some maid? Some Capulet lady?’

‘If you like.’ Mercutio grinned, and dipped to kiss Romeo’s lips as he might have done any of those women. ‘But after all, don’t you think this would outrage them more? Romeo! A Montague!’

He released Romeo’s hands, needing his own to slip buttons from their eyelets, tear aside linen and lace, and Romeo used that liberty to draw Mercutio down to him.

It was dark, with the apple tree shading them from the moonlight; dark, with Mercutio’s strong body stretched over his own, warm in the chill of the night. The gleam of his eyes, his teeth, shining in some faint light reflected from somewhere; and then only the dark tangle of his hair, as he nipped hard at Romeo’s collarbone.

In the morning, there would be a mark; it would show, if he did not fasten his shirt all the way to his throat. Romeo did not care. ‘Careful of my skin, is it?’

Mercutio looked up at him, laughing. ‘You speak literally; I, figuratively.’ His hands sought Romeo’s prick.

The Capulets would never know of this little abuse of their hospitality, no matter how much they guessed of the greater one. Not that either Romeo or Mercutio cared much in that moment. After all, Romeo was not born for hatred.


	3. Chapter 3

Romeo was not born to hate. He was born to love: helplessly, unwisely and hopelessly. And his friends were bound to watch each hapless attempt unfold, to laugh and to despair.

Benvolio, who did not know whether it hurt more to see Romeo love or to see Romeo lovelorn, thought to hasten matters: show him all the beauties of Verona, let lust flare and burn out, over and over, and see then if there was fire left to warm himself at, or if he would burn up in the flame.

Mercutio thought it better sport to watch Romeo woo Rosaline, sworn virgin, but thought too that the sport would be better if the odds were shorter. He set Romeo to the task of wooing, made Benvolio smile and simper and sigh as Rosaline, then scolded him for yielding too easily – for it always ended with Benvolio in Romeo’s arms, unable to deny in play what he wanted in truth. And Mercutio would make Romeo do it all over again, showing Benvolio how he should have sneered and scorned, made Romeo beg and flatter – and that always ended in the same way, too. And Benvolio’s heart sang, whether Romeo was kissing him or Mercutio: it came to the same thing.

It was a long time before they pronounced him competent to go chasing after Rosaline, and by then they had all three agreed that this was better sport than teasing Capulets.


	4. Chapter 4

Romeo was not born to hate.

And Benvolio was born to love him. Before he understood the loyalty he owed him as kinsman, he had given him his heart as his friend. Before he learned that the Capulets were to be hated, he loved Romeo above anything else on earth. Gladly would he have died for him, more gladly still did he live for him; and, as they grew, that love matured and ripened. As he came to understand how the feud tainted every aspect of life outside the Montague household, so he found it the sweeter to stay within the circle of his cousin’s presence. As they left behind scuffles conducted with fists and sticks and learned how to wield sword and dagger, love, too, became sharper, more powerful.

Never was Benvolio happier than when they rode out northwards, hunting or hawking, through the vineyards, upstream along the banks of the Adige. Never was he happier than when they dispensed with groom and attendant and rode alone. Outside the city walls, the name of Montague meant no more than it needed to, and the cares and conflict broke like a soap bubble. Outside the city walls, they were simply Romeo and Benvolio, and the happier for it. The further they rode, the less they had to worry them.

‘What lies beyond?’ Romeo asked, once, when they had gone further than ever before, until Verona was long out of sight behind them and the mountains rose before them, snowy and serene.

‘Tirolo,’ Benvolio said, letting the word melt on his tongue.

‘Tirolo,’ Romeo echoed, and it sounded different, a languid caress. ‘What think you, shall we keep riding?’

‘What’s there, for us?’ He did not know. Neither of them knew.

‘What isn’t?’

There was a light in Romeo’s eye that Benvolio had never seen before: an eagerness too calm to be called recklessness, a long-familiar longing that he had never expected to see reflected in this dearest of faces. He was already half-way out of the saddle as he said, ‘Nothing that isn’t here.’

It was the truth. They did not have to go anywhere near so far. It was the same sleepy noontide sky above them, broad and blue, and the same sun shining down upon them. A clearing in the trees, the sweet scent of warm grass, and the crisp mountain breeze mingling with quick sharp breaths; the touch of skin to skin; lips and hands discovering what was at once belovedly familiar and thrillingly new.

They did not speak any more, for they had no need for words – had not, indeed, the words for what this was – or had one word only.

Here, for this blessed afternoon, the world was as it was meant to be.

Romeo was born to love.


End file.
